Hyundai Blue Link halves the cost of GM’s OnStar telematics

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Hyundai is the world’s hottest automaker for style, fuel economy, and affordable technology. Its new Blue Link integrated cellular data-and-voice phone telematics system provides up to 32 services at a starting price roughly half of what it costs for OnStar, the offering from General Motors. The cheapest Blue Link service provides automatic crash notification and roadside service at $79 per year. A step-up version at $179 provides spoken text messages, location sharing, remote door unlock, and geo-fencing of teen drivers. A third package at $279 per year adds navigation lookup for those unwilling to do it themselves. Hyundai kicks off its Blue Link offerings shortly on the 2012 Hyundai Sonata, one of the 10 best selling cars in the US, and on a new sports coupe, the Hyundai Veloster.

What’s most important is that Hyundai is driving down the cost of embedded telematics, at least for the entry level package: automatic collision notification, SOS calling, and roadside assistance calling. Hyundai previously pushed the cost of on-board navigation in some models to as little as $1,250, which is dirt cheap, unless, of course, you know what a Garman or TomTom costs. Blue Link will eventually be embedded in all Hyundais as of the 2013 model year. GM charges $199 a year for its basic plan, Safe & Sound, which is equivalent to Hyundai’s mid-level, $179, Assurance & Essentials, plan. GM’s Directions & Connections at $299 a year is the equivalent of the high-end Blue Link Assurance, Essentials & Guidance at $279. Both high-end packages let you press a button to reach a call center and ask to have directions sent to your car, without having to key the address into a navigation system.

Both Blue Link and OnStar are what’s now called cloud-based (when you see commercials with a mom saying, “To the cloud!” you know the term reached critical mass), meaning your requests are processed on a server outside the car. ExtremeTech took a test drive earlier this year with a Blue Link prototype running the high-end Assurance, Essentials & Guidance version and it showed great promise, but rough edges. A request while driving through Manhattan to find the nearest Marriott Hotel took almost 10 minutes of repeated attempts to get the remote call center’s interactive voice response (IVR) system to understand what a human would have parsed in seconds. (And this with Hyundai’s product technology guru, Michael Deitz, doing the talking.) But that was pre-production software; it shows both the promise and the frustration of talking to computers. To cut costs, GM’s OnStar starts with an IVR system and then cuts over to a live operator if IVR chokes. Over the years GM has also bumped up the quality of its OnStar operators. The high-end Blue Link also has Eco-Coach, which tracks your fuel economy and driving habits and tells you what you’re doing wrong. A similar service exists on non-Hyundais where it’s called being married.

Hyundai Blue Link mirror button

The mid-level Blue Link package has the most promise. (The high-end package mostly means you pay ten bucks a month to have someone else program your navigation system.) Assurance & Essentials at $179 will read aloud text messages from your cellphone, a feature OnStar doesn’t have yet. (Ford Sync and BMW Assist do.) It also rats out your teen when he or she goes outside a specific boundary (geo-fence), exceeds a speed limit, or drives late at night (curfew alert). You set up and monitor your teen, or parking lot valet’s movements of your car, via the web. It shares a lot of features common with GM’s basic (Safe & Sound) service such as stolen vehicle slowdown and recovery and, from your smartphone, remote door unlock and remote start. Location sharing lets you tell friends or all of Facebook where you car is.

Cool as the tracking features are, they’re not fully baked: You can set a speed alert but it’s one speed, not the speed on the road by driven plus 5 mph. You know if the driver strays more than X miles from home but you can’t track in real time the way cops do using a GPS transmitter hidden under the car. Nor do automakers necessarily want to do that because it would quickly be used to keep track of wandering spouses, not just teen drivers.

The only thing cheaper is Ford Sync, which comes free on most Fords and costs $395 on entry models. With Sync, the driver’s cellphone communicates with cloud-based services, so everything is free, even rudimentary navigation. Critics say there’s no guarantee your cellphone will survive a car crash; Ford says the vast majority do. And besides, with renewal rates of only 50% for some telematics services after the free trial period, those cars won’t call for help in an accident because the service is inactive.

Price is relative. The BMW Assist service costs $750 (embedded in the price of high-end Bimmers, mostly over $50,000) but it comes with four years of service. Hyundai’s equivalent service for four years would be around $600. And BMW Assist includes enhanced automatic crash notification that not only calls for help but tells the call center operators how bad the crash is and predicts possible injuries so responders send the right rescue vehicles.

Hyundai worked with ATX to develop Blue Link services. ATX has other customers such as Toyota and BMW though each automaker has dedicated call center operators trained for that brand only.

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Sorry, no it’s not “hot”. Hyundai is Hyundai and it’s a synonymous of cheap Asian crap.

Anonymous

How many have you owned?…….as you type on your computer that was made in Detroit.

Anonymous

then don’t drive a Hyundai, that is what is great about America. you can drive what you want and what you like just like those of us that love our Hyundai

Anonymous

How many have you owed?….as you type on your computer made in Detroit.

Anonymous

Did the writer ever hear of the phrase: compare apples with apples? Hyundai is selling its midline telematics package ($179)) against GM’s basic package ($199). It does not matter if Hyundai has a less functional low-end package at $79 since GM is not competing (so far) with that limited a function set.

Also, where is Hyundai getting its satellite communications service? Is it from GM?

Rory Kasel

They don’t use satellites, they use cell phone towers. That means if you crash in a dead zone you are dead.

Anonymous

Thanks for your comments and questions. Hyundai Blue Link pricing was described several ways including at its lowest price, which is less than half what OnStar charges, when the owner is looking for security only (automatic crash notification, driver-initiated SOS at the press of a button, roadside service for a breakdown). When you get down to the second paragraph, there’s the apples-to-apples comparison you asked for: “GM charges $199 a year for its basic plan, Safe & Sound, which is equivalent to Hyundai’s mid-level, $179, Assurance & Essentials, plan.” As to the satellite service Hyundai uses, the two-way communication is via an embedded cellular data/voice phone (same as GM, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc., use). Hyundai uses Aeris Communications as its cellular provider; Aeris specializes in machine-to-machine communications. The call center is managed by ATX, the same provider used by BMW and Toyota. The only satellite service in the car is the GPS feed and XM Radio and there’s no communications uplink with either, thus the reason for using cellular / terrestrial communications. – Bill Howard, Extreme Tech

Anonymous

Danny, re: Hyundai as cheap … Asian … and crap: Hitting safely on 2 out of 3 would put you in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Here you’re recalling Hyundai as of 20 years ago. Were you the guy in 2000 who said those Samsung and LG flat panel TVs & DVD players were Korean junk and Korea Inc. would never, ever be a danger to Sony, Sharp, or Panasonic? Hyundai is the benchmark for affordable small cars now on everything except fun-to-drive where VW, Honda, Mazda and (if you choose your options carefully) Ford are the benchmarks. And Mini Cooper if you don’t need a workable back seat. – BH / ET

Claude Trotter

Text BLUELINK to 90210 on your cell phone to see all the great features BLUELINK has to offer and to find out how to get the best price on your new Hyundai

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